Existence of the Soul

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by sleuth anon yes u r right..spiral you are typical armo girl..no wonder i like to fry your EGO lol..look at you the way you talk hahahah shut upp ..well thats the right word when you have nothing to say but critisizing...u r the one who critisized in firts place..so shush::::

Shut up you're doing the same thing.

I think you all should die. Really.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Reason is important, yet confined only to the material world.

Reason holds for ideas and concepts, and arguments, which are not material objects. If you are going to insist that reason can only tell us things about the material world, please back that up somehow.

The idea that all knowledge comes from research and no knowledge from revelation is another metaphysical assumption.

The rest is circular.

I never said knowledge can't come from revelation. I asked you quite specifically if anything had been revealed to your divinely, and you said no, that all you had were experiences that you don't think our current understanding of science can explain. If God has spoken to you, then by all means, take his word and ignore little me. If you are going to rely on religious text, then we have a whole new monster on our hands, and a separate discussion to begin.

[loseyourname]

Originally posted by spiral oh shut up.

I asked for their "definition" of soul, because they kept on arguing back and forth, about something which they seemingly do not have a mutual understanding of.

If it exists, it would have to be a locus of consciousness external to the physical body and brain. There would likely be contained some form of individualized awareness, though this isn't necessary (i.e. there could be one soul that inhabits all living things, and individual consciousness might be entirely a brain phenomenon). I'll post a bit on scientific evidence - or at least paranormal studies - that show some evidence for the existence of what might be called a soul. Later.

[sleuth]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Shut up you're doing the same thing.

I think you all should die. Really.

**slaps anon with yellow flower**

[Anonymouse]

Ahh look at these petty humans trying to define and prove the existence of the soul using scientific criterion, when the soul itself, immaterial, cannot be proven using material methods, but must be only believed. And once again we get back to the tautology. Where reason ends, faith begins.

[Arvestaked]

Originally posted by Anonymouse Ahh look at these petty humans trying to define and prove the existence of the soul using scientific criterion, when the soul itself, immaterial, cannot be proven using material methods, but must be only believed. And once again we get back to the tautology. Where reason ends, faith begins.

"Matter" and "material" are of the same root. Heat, electricity, gravity and magnetism are all immaterial, yet can be proven to exist by, what you refer to as, material things. Just chose your words more carefully. L.y.n. did not mention those people because he agrees with them and I do not give them any credit either.

And you are right: "Where reason ends, faith begins" for those who are uncomfortable not having all of the answers.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by Arvestaked "Matter" and "material" are of the same root. Heat, electricity, gravity and magnetism are all immaterial, yet can be proven to exist by, what you refer to as, material things. Just chose your words more carefully. L.y.n. did not mention those people because he agrees with them and I do not give them any credit either.

And you are right: "Where reason ends, faith begins" for those who are uncomfortable not having all of the answers.

Indeed these are things that govern the material world and hence they can only be discovered or harnessed and proven using scientific and mathematical criteria. The soul relates to mind and faith and intuition, rather a self consciousness which is quite different from those things that govern the world around us. You cannot do the same for the soul, even though for the most part we all know intuitively of ourselves to possess one, unless you're that lady in your avatar.

[loseyourname]

I will say it once again. The physical world is governed by the laws of physics. Physical bodies behave in a way that is predictable, on large scales at speeds far from that of light through the use of Newtonian mechanics, on small scales and at speeds approaching that of light through time-dilation calculations and probability-wave functions derived through relativistic and quantum techniques.

There is a separate world that exists that is not bound to these rules. It is the world of ideas, that may or may not exist separate from the human mind (that is another issue entirely). The point is that these nonphysical, immaterial objects are subject instead to the rules of logic. Even the Mouse must use an argument utilizing logic in his attempt to prove that logic does not apply to his faith. He has failed. He has simply restated that logic has no place in the immaterial world, and ignored my repeated demonstrations that it does.

What he does not seem to realize is that even he is basing his belief on reason. He has said already that certain religious experiences have led him to believe in the existence of God. Thus he is using an evidential justification for his belief. His belief is not based on nothing, and although it relies on faith in that he is simply assuming an arbitrary explanation in the absence of a verifiable explanation, it also relies on reason in that is attributing a causal relationship between his assumed entity capable of bringing about states of being that he has experienced and those states of being themselves. Given that he has used this reasoning, his reasoning can be attacked, as it is obviously faulty. The simple fact that a man who has shown such a fundamental misunderstanding of basic scientific theories cannot find a scientific explanation for his experiences does not prove that there is no scientific explanation. Furthermore, science has a wonderful track record of explaining that which it previously was unable to explain. Since he will not share his evidence, we have are left with no way to evaluate it, and instead he retreats into fideism, claiming that we cannot possibly comprehend what he has to say and that my arguments are misplaced. He does not provide any backing for what he says, only saying that because he believes his beliefs to be true (which is the definition of belief and nothing out of the ordinary), they must be true - which I might point out could be used to prove the truth of any conceivable belief. That is also fallacious reasoning, another fact that he ignores. Why he continues on in a discussion that he claims is pointless and can lead to no further understanding I cannot figure out.

By the way, I love that he claims to know the intuition and desire of six billion individual human beings.

[Anonymouse]

Science is the study of how our natural world works and reacts, not what lies behind or beneath it. Thus science is very useful, but limited, just like human reason and intelligence, both useful yet limited. We are finite creatures. Thus we cannot know what lies beyond in the infinite. Even evolution is based on faith. The big bang theory is one lard of assumptions. Thus we have faith in it, just like we have faith in God, in soul, in love.

Now you will sit here and deny that a soul exists, deny God, and make it inconsequential, because it doesn't meet the evidence that science regards "worthy", yet science itself is terribly limited and the idea that only science can deliver knowledge, is itself a metaphysical assumption. Again, we have all been through this before, it is tautology which you won't let go, because why admit that science is limited, since you are hopelessly dependent on and a student of science, and wanted to study human consciousness by going into the biological sciences. Studying something that is immaterial by something that deals with the physical world, is not possible. You yourself have stated here repeatedly that the immaterial cannot be proven by science and now you want to use science to study the immaterial?

As for logic, logic is precisely what we use for the material world, not the immaterial. According to reason and logic God cannot exist, I have already highlighted this. But I have also highlighted that logic, reason, science, are all limited, because they deal with our physical realm. Faith cannot be logic, for it is faith. That is your mistaken assumption.

Belief is based on faith, not reason, because reason ends where faith begins. The belief in the big bang is not based on reason, it is based on faith. You will not admit that reason, logic, and science, ergo human "knowledge" are limited at a certain point, and from that the invisible and the immaterial is based on faith. Reason and logic cannot permeate into the realm of the immaterial, for they are not part of it. The scientific method simply cannot answer all questions, therefore cannot be possibly the only source of knowledge. Science has a very important job which I do not dispute. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes, that is not a scientific question, nor it is one based on logic.

Whether or not an intelligence beyond our universe and comprehension exists, reason and the scientific method cannot answer. Anyone who attempts to answer that question, even scientists with their "big bang" are making a philosophical or metaphysical assumption, not a scientific statement, therefore they are using faith. The total rejection of all faith and belief would strike out a principle from human nature, which human nature is hopelessly tied to, man is a faithful creature. After all faith must flow out from some inner source within us when the evidence of that which we are to believe is not presented to our senses, thus I call this the soul. And like I said, if science and knowledge is the sun, belief is the man.

Maybe you should go re read my previous posts, since your obvious hang up with this is an exercise in yesterday.

[Anonymouse]

And as far as my "evidences" they are not scientific evidences, they are based on spiritual experiences, being wholly different from science. You cannot weigh something of the spiritual with the scientific since the two are mutually exclusive. According to science there is no such thing.

How do you explain dreams then? How do you explain seeing something in a dream, before it happened?